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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26025091">i'd call it thank you</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/konoco/pseuds/konoco'>konoco</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Persona 5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, M/M, if you look at the date closely and pretend it's july today instead of august congrats, internal monologue brought to you by yours truly amamiya ren, vague p5r spoilers, vent - Freeform</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 06:47:26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,431</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26025091</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/konoco/pseuds/konoco</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>This love was once named hope, but happy endings make Ren grateful.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Akechi Goro/Amamiya Ren, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>i'd call it thank you</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>konobiju is meant to be a vent account. meaning: the most self-indulgent of self-indulgent. enjoy.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>There’s a small drop that falls atop his head as he walks his way back to Leblanc. Ren looks up to see that the sky had turned grey, realized a second too late that he doesn’t have an umbrella with him, and is then partially soaked by the sudden onslaught of rain that came down just as he bolts his way back to the Yongen-Jaya train station platform. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>One year. Five months. 19 days. Hours, counting. Minutes, counting. Seconds? Not a clue.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Ren checks his phone only to be greeted with a pitch black screen and a plug-in sign that tells him his phone needed charging. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>There’s not much that happens right after things actually do happen. How eloquent.</span>
  </em>
  <span> That’s the conclusion he reaches when he realizes that watching scurrying people go in and out of the passing trains is as good as staring off into space. He knows there’s a little instinct in his head that tells him to think while he still can. Maybe to </span>
  <em>
    <span>preserve</span>
  </em>
  <span> as much as he can, for the lack of a better word. He feels the bitter tang of </span>
  <em>
    <span>forgetting</span>
  </em>
  <span> in his mouth, knowing that with each fleeting second is a small piece of his memory getting buried beneath the ones he mindlessly makes everyday.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>That day,</span>
  </em>
  <span> Ren reasons with himself that internal monologues are healthy and are not in any way a sign of feeling too gloomy, </span>
  <em>
    <span>I wanted him to teach me. He didn’t have… enough of everything. Maybe he could teach me what it could’ve been like. Saying goodbyes and things. I’ve never had my death planned before. He has.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>There’s not a lot to it. For him, maybe. But it was for me. I don’t like how he’s so used to having his life be tossed around like some plaything someone could toy with just because they have the power to.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Ren almost flinches when the crackle of lightning, loud and clear and overpowering all the other white noises he doesn’t pay attention to, makes itself known. He swears he feels a sliver of electricity seep itself into his… </span>
  <em>
    <span>whatever. It’s just lightning. There’s so little chance you’d get struck with lightning inside a subway train station platform.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>But to be honest,</span>
  </em>
  <span> he resumes, eyes darting back and forth to a mother and her child scurrying inside a newly arrived train and to the man presumably sleeping by the staircase, </span>
  <em>
    <span>I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know how I can say goodbye. Or how to not say goodbye. It… it kinda comes with the act, doesn’t it? If you know it, you know it, and if you don’t… </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Well, not knowing makes everything scarier especially when you feel like it’s near. Two completely different things. I wonder what it felt like for Akechi.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He feels his chest tighten as a sudden gust of wind flies through the subway’s platform. It was a good thing he decided to wear a scarf today. Checkered black and grey, a little trinket he bought for himself when he returned to his hometown. He didn’t like recalling things from that place. It was unpleasant, ugly, and it’s giving him more things to occupy his mind with than… than…</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I kinda feel stupid for trying to say this out loud. I don’t know. You might tell me emotions are never stupid, but I just think that… well, emotions could get pretty irrational. Out of the blue. Sometimes they don’t make sense, and I think that’s why it’s stupid, because everything we happen to not understand is just stupid. Makes you feel bad for yourself because you don’t know how you feel. You get me?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Certainly. But don’t you think it holds more weight when it’s unknown, of how and why you feel like that?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“No thanks. I’m tired of not knowing things about myself. It’s taken up far too much of… time. Space. Stuff.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It’s taken everything, not knowing things soon enough. I don’t know if I’m ready to take the gamble between knowing that everything will happen and unable to do something about it, or not knowing about everything and only being met with whatever it’s going to leave me. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Ren makes sure he helps the old woman who seemed to struggle finding her balance in the surprisingly huge crowd that steps out on this platform. He’s given a small </span>
  <em>
    <span>thank you</span>
  </em>
  <span> and a piece of bread from grandma’s brown paper bag of loaves. She ends up taking one of the waiting room seats Ren’s been eyeing earlier, but he soon felt as though the rain would soon stop, which is why he let her sit on it instead. The rest of the seats were filled with tired workers wearing corporate attires and a few sleepy kids being watched over by their still-standing guardians. Ren leaves the cramped space and goes back to leaning against the wall just by the stair entrance-slash-exit of the platform.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>You would’ve told me to have taken the seat before I could get grannie off the train, but you would’ve done the same,</span>
  </em>
  <span> Ren somberly thinks. </span>
  <em>
    <span>You would’ve given this loaf back, maybe even have yourself be treated like a handheld umbrella if she needed to get back in time. You have a rather unique kindness to you that doesn’t seem to show all the time, but when it does…</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He remembers warm smiles, shy laughs, small talk and long conversations in the silent evenings of Leblanc or in his spot at the jazz club, and maybe Ren tears up a little at the memories that he suddenly remembers. Maybe Ren’s allowed to mourn today, of all days. In a train station platform, on a rainy day, with a piece of bread in his hands and his cold cheeks. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>This me,</span>
  </em>
  <span> he thinks as the next train goes, </span>
  <em>
    <span>was not saved by mom. Not my dad. Not anyone I know. I wasn’t saved by God. I don’t think any of them made me either. Metaphorically.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Somehow, you’re an exception. Somehow, there’s a small part of you that mixes in naturally that I found myself opening up little by little.</span>
  </em>
  <span> He eyes the gloves he wears — a mismatch of rubber black and cotton gray — and recalls his vague memory of buying a little certain </span>
  <em>
    <span>Justice</span>
  </em>
  <span> figure not too long ago. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Yeah. Small parts fill in the empty spaces in-between, they say. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Not to say that you were a small part. Everything about you just happened to fit in the spaces I thought were going to remain empty. Now I’m left with a huge, Goro Akechi-shaped hole that I don’t think is ever going to be filled by anyone or anything. Unless you had a secret twin, but then maybe the small pieces wouldn’t make sense, and then I’m back to making more holes.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Ren doesn’t know when the internal monologue became a one-sided dialogue between him and the non-existent Goro in his consciousness. He doesn’t care. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>But even if you had a twin that’s… taken up so much of you and is really like you… if they’re charming and smart…</span>
  </em>
  <span> Ren shakes his head with a little grin. </span>
  <em>
    <span>When it’s not you, it’s a little boring. So I’ll wait for you. Give it 80, 90 more years. Maybe even more if Japanese life expectancy becomes more positive as the years go by. It’s for you.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It’s my turn to wait for the second part of this game, I suppose. No matter whether you’d be alive or not. That’s the first promise I could make while smiling.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Ren looks around to see that a lot of those waiting on the platform were climbing up the stairs to Yongen-Jaya. The rain seems to become weaker with each minute that passes by. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Mama, mama! A rainbow! Can you see it? It’s there!” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Yuu, don’t point!”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>A train arrives at the platform. Ren eats a part of the bread. </span>
  <em>
    <span>The sky is pretty, and yet you’re sad. How… fascinating. That’s something he’d say. </span>
  </em>
  <span>He laughs weakly. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The you that I like, and the me who likes you… maybe one day, I’ll learn how to treasure myself just as I do you.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The train opens and Ren takes another bite off his bread. He sees a familiar mop of brown hair in the crowd and he gulps the food in his mouth. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Ha. Rainbows, they said.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He walks up to the platform, not caring if the others gave him funny looks for not entering the train. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Ren smiles.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>If I had to give a name to this love, it would be “thank you.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
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